The present invention relates to a means for preventing the overflow of a toilet bowl during a flushing operation and more particularly relates to a valve unit that can easily be installed into a standard toilet and which can quickly be actuated during a flushing operation to prevent the toilet bowl from overflowing if the waste outlet of the bowl becomes clogged.
In the flushing operation of a standard toilet, a defined volume of water is flowed into the toilet bowl to flush the contents thereof out through a waste outlet in the bottom of the bowl. If this waste outlet becomes clogged or the downstream plumbing becomes blocked as commonly occurs from time to time in most toilets, the normal flow of water during flushing will unfortunately cause the bowl to overflow which, in turn, obviously creates an unpleasant situation.
To prevent overflow during flushing, several toilets have been specially designed to include a built-in, float-operated valve means which automatically shuts off the flow of water to the bowl if the water level in the bowl rises above a certain height. Examples of such toilets are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,430,586; 1,090,200; 1,956,086; 2,531,475; and 4,170,049. However, all of these toilets must be originally constructed to include special passages and chambers therein for the float-operated valve means and therefore must be purchased and installed as a complete unit. Since most toilets in use today are not so constructed, a need exists for an inexpensive means which can be easily installed into a standard toilet which can prevent overflowing when the bowl outlet becomes clogged.